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Post by sigurdur on Jan 11, 2013 15:07:57 GMT
Skeptical Science Syndrome is still alive and well.
This is even prevalent in the Ag industry. John Deere has been the leader at bringing out machinery that then needs continuous updates so that it will function. Eventually, what should have been done in R&D and field development is accomplished.
This results in unhappy customers. A few years ago John Deere came out with a new combine. Custom cutters ended up carrying spare hydro's with them. Then as the combines came north and ended up combining corn with some snow(Yes, something that does happen).....the fans for the separation system would get water in them and blow up. It was a three day job to fix the fan. John Deere got so frustrated that they refused to warranty the fans. A lot of unhappy customers, and a lot of Red and Yellow paint was sold as the result.
At least the custom cutters had an option of replacement to something that DID work.
Long term climate models leave us with no option of any model that can stand on its own. The results of 20+ models are averaged, and then we are told this is going to be future reality.
I don't know how dumb some with PhD's think the general public is......but from what I can tell, the general public is better educated than most of the PhD's anymore.
It is kinda funny how this all works. When I go to meetings now, put on to share knowledge, not ONE of the PhD's asks what education a farmer, who questions the results, has. Instead, they have learned that the farmers nowadays are a pretty smart lot. I witnessed, (ok....disclaimer. it was myself that did it)..the questioning of results of several new classes of fungicides. The PhD was certain, so certain, that he talked one large grower into switching his whole farm to this new class. The results was disaster. I was flying to a meeting and sat beside the owner after that harvest. He asked me how I knew this wouldn't work. Told him the chemistry was screwed up on the fungicide. During the meeting, I showed why the fungicide would not work. The PhD was so certain that he overlooked an obvious flaw.
This is what we are seeing in long term forecasting today.
It is an infant science, and should be treated as such. The people engaged in long term forecasting are not dubious, nor trying to pull a fast one. They are just so engaged that they are not seeing the forest for the trees.
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Post by magellan on Jan 11, 2013 17:52:12 GMT
nautonnier, should I believe a chief constable who has to deal with day-to-day issues caused by severe weather, or should I believe some ideological hack who is a strong advocate for homeopathy and states that it makes sense that water holds the "memory" of things it has been in contact with. Hmmm...Delinpole is just a loudmouth idiot on a range of subjects. Clearly in this case, the focus of the discreditors is on the climate-type forecasts that the Met Office have regularly stated are probabilistic such that the central projection will be wrong (particularly for the UK's unreliable weather) often enough to find examples of it being wrong, whereas the focus of the Met Office defence is that the 5-day forecasts which are relied upon by the people at the cutting edge of providing public services, are generally far more accurate and well regarded. If you look at the statements from just about any reputable climate institution, including the Met Office, the focus is on the long term trend, for example pointing out that the average temperature of the 2000-2010 was higher than 1990-2000. The current forecast is that 2010-2020 will be warmer than 2000-2010 average. Against this, measurements of rising absolute humidity are detectable on similar (perhaps longer) period and rising levels of "extreme rainfall" similarly. So it is providing a constant and consistent picture. Attacks on the picture always rely on misquotes and misinterpretations it seems. Ho hum... In your world apparently, a prediction can be made, continually be wrong, the model adjusted to fit reality after the fact every few years, then claim [by omission] the prediction was right all along. In your world, that is good honest science. In my world I would be fired for falsification of documents. I don't give a crap they switched to a 'new and improved model'. They said that in 2007. I don't care if they switched to tossing bones and reading tarot cards. When making predictions, mulligans are not allowed. Either the guesses are right or they are wrong. Anyone that has followed Met O's predictions and has a molecule of honesty knows Met O, beginning in the mid 2000's made very stark and bold predictions. Met O has since wiped their website of all traces of those "obsolete" predictions. They are gone. Only by finding old handouts, quotes in news articles etc. and those who took snapshots of the webpages can those fallacious predictions be recalled. Why do people have to resort to using Wayback to locate old Met O predictions? If you look at the statements from just about any reputable climate institution, including the Met Office, the focus is on the long term trend, for example pointing out that the average temperature of the 2000-2010 was higher than 1990-2000. Oh really? So, noting 10 years of rising temperatures and 10 years of flat/cooling (depending on the source) in your example is being "misinformed", even though the last 10 years trend should be higher than the previous 10. HadCrut3 HadCrut4 Isn't it neat how 1998 just kind of disappeared with the latest Met O "adjustments"? Even better, they managed to increase the trend in HadCrut4. All for the sake of accurate temperature reporting I'm sure. No doubt your example years are more desirable. So, instead of using 1990-2000 and 2000-2010, we choose 1992-2002 and 2002-2012: Cherry picking is fun isn't it? The best way is to move backwards in time to test the null hypothesis. Has this been done? Why yes it has: wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/06/crowdsourcing-a-temperature-trend-analysi/For RSS the warming is NOT significant for 23 years. For RSS: +0.130 +/-0.136 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1990 For UAH, the warming is NOT significant for 19 years. For UAH: 0.143 +/- 0.173 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994 For Hacrut3, the warming is NOT significant for 19 years. For Hadcrut3: 0.098 +/- 0.113 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994 For Hacrut4, the warming is NOT significant for 18 years. For Hadcrut4: 0.098 +/- 0.111 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1995 For GISS, the warming is NOT significant for 17 years. For GISS: 0.113 +/- 0.122 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1996 Craig Loehle performed a similar analysis in ~2010. Note that UAH still has a warm bias to be corrected early this year. I recall RSS was supposed to be the greenhouse savior for AGW back in 2007 ROFL. The bottom line is steve, Met O was wrong, the IPCC was wrong, Hansen was wrong, Trenberth was wrong, Santer was wrong......they were all WRONG on multiple levels. Why you folks can't admit error is simply baffling. Get used to it.
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Post by steve on Jan 12, 2013 8:29:24 GMT
nautonnier, I don't know if I can be any clearer, but I addressed precisely that point above. The Met Office botched their publicity of their seasonal forecasts with their "Odds on for a barbecue summer" headline. They thought they were being clever and highlighting the fact that the forecasts were probabilistic (with the Odds on bit). Of course it sent completely the wrong signals. So they withdrew the advice from public consumption. They do still provide the advice to those who want it. And while the advice for the UK is always going to be very difficult to make use of, seasonal forecasts coming out of the same system but for other parts of the world do have more useful information (eg. timing of African monsoon). Having withdrawn the advice from public consumption, the Met Office were sent FoI requests that forced them to release it. Eg. this idiot who didn't understand that the Met Office never said that the system had been scrapped: autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/met-office-document-shows-it-only-renamed-its-seasonal-forecasts/With the decadal forecast, there was publicity when they announced the new Depresys system, but since then they have simply periodically updated the forecast. I can only remember that I've searched for the update every year or so on the website - I can't remember it being publicised. So in short Delingpole is refusing to see the point. That the main focus of the Met Office is and continues to be its shorter term forecasts. (Nevertheless, hardnosed business folk in the energy and reinsurance industry do pay for the seasonal advice). This plus all the other errors and disunderstandings in his post are worth identifying.
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Post by steve on Jan 12, 2013 8:34:39 GMT
Sigurdur,
I did a search of "trends in relative humidity" which gives a selection of links that seem to identify a trend of rising absolute humidity and precipitable water near the surface.
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Post by steve on Jan 12, 2013 8:49:34 GMT
magellan,
I always have to repeat this, but you continually lie and distort what I say, so people should take the above with a large pinch of salt.
As you have managed to produce copies of both the prior forecast and the existing forecast, you know that both forecasts are still on the Met Office website. You also know that the first forecast from 6 or so years ago was published in the peer reviewed literature.
The outcome of the forecast was that it turns out the temperatures are below the bottom end of what was considered likely. In lay terms, it was wrong.
The model used in the original forecast is from the 1990s. The model used in the new forecast is very similar to the one used in the operational forecast system - so it's much more up to date. That's all. In a few years time it will be updated again to deal with the shortcomings of the current forecast. If the current forecast is no better than the last then questions will be asked in the house.
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Post by sigurdur on Jan 12, 2013 18:29:51 GMT
Steve: Thank you for the search phrase. There is one paper of interest that I had not read.
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Post by dontgetoutmuch on Jan 14, 2013 19:36:14 GMT
Saw this today and thought of Steve...
"British MET Office: The MET Office has come under severe criticism for two sets of predictions, some of the criticism is justified and some is not. The MET office made very inaccurate predictions of precipitation and drought. The biggest fault with the MET office appears to be its overconfidence in its short term predictions. As repeated many times, regional models have shown little skill in predicting beyond 10 days"...
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Post by dontgetoutmuch on Jan 14, 2013 22:11:50 GMT
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Post by magellan on Jan 15, 2013 1:49:55 GMT
magellan, I always have to repeat this, but you continually lie and distort what I say, so people should take the above with a large pinch of salt. As you have managed to produce copies of both the prior forecast and the existing forecast, you know that both forecasts are still on the Met Office website. You also know that the first forecast from 6 or so years ago was published in the peer reviewed literature. The outcome of the forecast was that it turns out the temperatures are below the bottom end of what was considered likely. In lay terms, it was wrong. The model used in the original forecast is from the 1990s. The model used in the new forecast is very similar to the one used in the operational forecast system - so it's much more up to date. That's all. In a few years time it will be updated again to deal with the shortcomings of the current forecast. If the current forecast is no better than the last then questions will be asked in the house. I think most people are smart enough able to recognize a duck when they see one. Others will claim it isn't a duck.
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Post by sigurdur on Jan 15, 2013 4:08:37 GMT
magellan:
It might be a crow.....ya know?
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Post by Pooh on Jan 15, 2013 6:28:23 GMT
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Post by icefisher on Jan 16, 2013 17:06:42 GMT
I don't know if I can be any clearer, but I addressed precisely that point above. The Met Office botched their publicity of their seasonal forecasts with their "Odds on for a barbecue summer" headline. They thought they were being clever and highlighting the fact that the forecasts were probabilistic (with the Odds on bit). Of course it sent completely the wrong signals. So they withdrew the advice from public consumption. They do still provide the advice to those who want it. And while the advice for the UK is always going to be very difficult to make use of, seasonal forecasts coming out of the same system but for other parts of the world do have more useful information (eg. timing of African monsoon). Having withdrawn the advice from public consumption, the Met Office were sent FoI requests that forced them to release it. Eg. this idiot who didn't understand that the Met Office never said that the system had been scrapped: autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/met-office-document-shows-it-only-renamed-its-seasonal-forecasts/With the decadal forecast, there was publicity when they announced the new Depresys system, but since then they have simply periodically updated the forecast. I can only remember that I've searched for the update every year or so on the website - I can't remember it being publicised. So in short Delingpole is refusing to see the point. That the main focus of the Met Office is and continues to be its shorter term forecasts. (Nevertheless, hardnosed business folk in the energy and reinsurance industry do pay for the seasonal advice). This plus all the other errors and disunderstandings in his post are worth identifying. Natch Steve! Energy companies are often price regulated (e.g. profits are figured as a percentage of expected expenses) and reinsurance spreaders have tough due diligence requirements when going about the business of spreading risk across a spectrum of unsophisticated stock market investors and of course they operate off commissions so both groups somewhat thrive on bad news and credible due diligence that raises prices (think of the credit swap market that collapsed in 2008). And of course the Met is used to having that teat to suck on. So its pretty much a match made in heaven. Obviously publicizing it was not helping the business. I get your point that the forecasts are probabilistic and one can really roll snake eyes several times in a row but image for these folks is important so they don't get laughed out the room when they are trying to sell their products. The guys with the astrologists as advisors have been winning these financial battles.
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Post by magellan on Jan 16, 2013 17:58:27 GMT
I don't know if I can be any clearer, but I addressed precisely that point above. The Met Office botched their publicity of their seasonal forecasts with their "Odds on for a barbecue summer" headline. They thought they were being clever and highlighting the fact that the forecasts were probabilistic (with the Odds on bit). Of course it sent completely the wrong signals. So they withdrew the advice from public consumption. They do still provide the advice to those who want it. And while the advice for the UK is always going to be very difficult to make use of, seasonal forecasts coming out of the same system but for other parts of the world do have more useful information (eg. timing of African monsoon). Having withdrawn the advice from public consumption, the Met Office were sent FoI requests that forced them to release it. Eg. this idiot who didn't understand that the Met Office never said that the system had been scrapped: autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/met-office-document-shows-it-only-renamed-its-seasonal-forecasts/With the decadal forecast, there was publicity when they announced the new Depresys system, but since then they have simply periodically updated the forecast. I can only remember that I've searched for the update every year or so on the website - I can't remember it being publicised. So in short Delingpole is refusing to see the point. That the main focus of the Met Office is and continues to be its shorter term forecasts. (Nevertheless, hardnosed business folk in the energy and reinsurance industry do pay for the seasonal advice). This plus all the other errors and disunderstandings in his post are worth identifying. Natch Steve! Energy companies are often price regulated (e.g. profits are figured as a percentage of expected expenses) and reinsurance spreaders have tough due diligence requirements when going about the business of spreading risk across a spectrum of unsophisticated stock market investors and of course they operate off commissions so both groups somewhat thrive on bad news and credible due diligence that raises prices (think of the credit swap market that collapsed in 2008). And of course the Met is used to having that teat to suck on. So its pretty much a match made in heaven. Obviously publicizing it was not helping the business. I get your point that the forecasts are probabilistic and one can really roll snake eyes several times in a row but image for these folks is important so they don't get laughed out the room when they are trying to sell their products. The guys with the astrologists as advisors have been winning these financial battles. Steve definitely has Skeptical Science Syndrome and should schedule an appointment with Dr. Sigurdur. What he is refusing to acknowledge is the FACT Met O has for many years bragged in writing on their website and multiple PR campaigns/news reports how important their long term predictions forecasts scenarios(?) for policy makers. They are players gaming the system.
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Post by sigurdur on Jan 16, 2013 18:21:03 GMT
Magellan: Thank you for the mention, but my PhD is not in phyc.
Want to talk economics.....now that is a different story.
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Post by dontgetoutmuch on Jan 16, 2013 18:49:58 GMT
Magellan: Thank you for the mention, but my PhD is not in phyc. Want to talk economics.....now that is a different story. Ok, economics. Have you (or anyone) seen any legitimate examination of the actual performance of a wind farm, over the first decade of its life. I want to know: a. How much it cost to implement, as opposed to how much it was projected to cost. b. How much maintenance costs differed from projections. c. How much electricity was generated compared to faceplate over the course of the decade. d. How much coal/gas/fossil fuel was saved over the period vs projections. e. How are the windfarms holding up. What % of the farm is still operating optimally after 10 years. That sort of thing. Anchorage just built a wind farm up here. It has been mighty quiet since it went online. If it was going well, I would have expected to hear about it...
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